“Blogs are newsletters that don’t require subscriptions…”

There is a trend toward sending electronic QSL cards that seems to be driving a lot of hams batty, especially among the DX community. These are the result of software that makes sending an electronic image of a QSL card as easy as clicking a button. One particular vendor is responsible for most of those I’ve received and their service comes in the guise of providing you a map of all your QSOs. All you have to do is upload the ADIF from your logging program and presto you get a pretty QSO map! One more mouse click and the service will be happy to email QSL cards to all those you have contacted.

It’s easy to see why many consider this obtrusive. The email addresses are probably harvested from QRZ.com (?) causing some to consider it spam. Personally, I don’t mind getting them as they are easily deleted and I see it as a friendly gesture. I mean, it’s not as nice as an actual printed QSL card that arrives by postal mail. And unless it’s accompanied by an LoTW confirmation it’s worthless for ARRL award credit. I don’t participate in this practice, but do I despise receiving them as many seem to? Meh. Que Sera, Sera.

The coming upgrade to LoTW is long overdue and is probably a “lesson learned” from the Great Hack of 2024. I’m no IT professional, just a retired old white dude who uses LoTW exclusively on a daily basis. Since any and all improvements are in my own self-interest, what I say here may just be the bleating of an old goat. But I believe it’s time for all users of LoTW to get behind this effort and make a donation to support the cause. Yeah, it’s a free service. For now. But I’ve uploaded more than 15,000 QSL records to LoTW and had that been QSL cards via postal mail it would come to a staggering sum of money. I’m not saying the two are equal, but this is the game we play and this is the service that makes it possible. Only a cheapskate would use LoTW and not be willing to toss them a few bucks.

Surely there are no freeloaders among the noble amateur radio fraternity?

I’m old, retired, and don’t have to pay attention to all the AI falderal. Honestly, I’m sick of hearing about it though it has become too pervasive to ignore completely. I believe it’s marketing hype driven by unrealistic hopes and expectations for endless corporate profit. It is interesting the way some see it as a replacement for human labor and maybe it is for certain tasks. Maybe.

But my wife and I were visiting another small town yesterday where we stopped at a Starbucks. It was nearly 100F as this oppressive dome of heat just won’t ease up. The ‘feels like’ temperature has been hovering around 110F. Brutal, right? So I’m sipping a latte inside the cool air-conditioned coffee shop when I noticed four guys working on the roof of a nearby gas station/convenience store. Obviously emergency A/C work given the weather at the moment. The roof was black pitch and I assume 50 degrees hotter up there than on the ground. I also assume that workers inside the station were complaining about the A/C being out in such miserable weather despite it being at least 50 degrees cooler where they were.

I asked my wife, do you suppose AI will one day put those guys out of work? Hell no. There is no AI coming that will replace them. In fact, I think they need to start asking for a thousand dollars or more an hour for what they do. Same goes for the plumber. Is AI gonna crawl under my kitchen sink and fix a leak? Hell no. Same goes for hundreds of other tasks that even Elon’s robot army won’t be capable of doing for a hundred years, if ever.

The eventual legacy of this silly AI moment should be higher labor costs for skilled work. I’m not talking about the ‘gee-whiz’ summarizing of your email messages. Or the falling cost of employing script kiddies. Certainly the cost of some software creation might go down, though the public won’t benefit from those reductions as corporations will hang on to every extra dime to offset the supernatural volumes of energy and new data centers this dystopian future demands.

I can, however, see the cost of real human labor becoming much higher than anyone ever thought possible. Imagine one day seeing woodworkers, plumbers, HVAC techs, auto mechanics, and other skilled crafts people in line with America’s oligarchs waiting to order their new yachts…